Could you hear the bell? ghanta

Doing a "Weird Al"

2011-09-21T23:28:00.000+05:30

It's been a long time since I thought and wrote
Or maybe I didn't have much to make a note
Ooooh, here's my thinking cap, here's my thinking cap, here's my thinking cap,
Gotta find it out who is steering my boat
It's been a long time, been a long time,
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.

चाँद तारों की कहानियों में
किसी का हाथ ढूंढ रहा था
मीठी बातों में सूनी रातों में
अनदेखे सपने ढूंढ रहा था

Look at those bozos, that's the way you do it
You smoke some pot and study MBA
That ain't working, so that's the point to do it
Money for nothin' and keep jumping 'cross the bay

दिल आखिर तू क्यूँ रोता है,
दुनिया में यूँ ही होता है, वगैरा वगैरा....
अपने हिस्से की धूप वैसे भी जी लेगा
जोगी अपना ग़म आसानी से पी लेगा

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a routine
No escape from reality
Open your eyes, meaning of liff you see
I'm just moving by, I feel no hunger
Because I'm late-come, early-go, little joy, lot of woe
Any way the work grows, doesn't really matter to me, to me.

सिर रख के सोने के लिए
एक कंधा ढूंढ रहा हूँ
वो समझ और संभाल लेंगे
ये उम्मीद ढूंढ रहा हूँ

Now I fish, now I fish, and have beer
We're just few stuck souls swimming in a wish hole, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old peers.
Fish, and have some beer.

Obligatory links to references - Weird Al, Led Zep, Dire Straits, Queen, Liff, Pink Floyd, Poem, ZNMD

Damn nature, you brilliant!

2010-02-18T21:17:00.004+05:30

Recently I read a quote which went something like –

There is a incredible amount of phobia of supercomputers taking over the world. I sometimes wonder if it is arrogant to assume that our one creation which has been fifty odd years in evolution can beat the billions of years of natural evolution so easily.

This research is immensely humbling, illustrating that quote. On one hand scientists are scrambling to get quantum computers running at conditions which require cryogenic temperatures and responses in femtoseconds (10^-15 second). And on the other hand algae may be doing it already all this while. As a fair comparison, quantum computers are not running at room temperature and definitely not generating food side by side.

Earlier I was wondering if we are really the smartest/best species on the planet (You will point out rats and dolphins, but I suspect Douglas Adams was overestimating humans.) and we need to acknowledge ingenuity of other lifeforms on earth. There is enough in the world to know and there will be ever more which is not understood.

P.S. This part was mind-blowing –

This "quantum coherence" binds them together for a fleeting 400 femtoseconds (4 × 10^-13 seconds). But this is long enough for the energy from the absorbed photon to simultaneously "try out" all possible paths across the antenna.

Comparing that to our "normal" sense of time, I feel like typing one keystroke in 1000 years. Only similar thing I can think of is this xkcd comic.

lux gold coin fraud

2010-01-17T01:45:00.004+05:30

The omnipresent ad of (some) lux soaps containing gold coin will be pulled back. I could not find any english news report, here are Pratahkal (Hindi) and Loksatta (Marathi) reports. The two are not reporting the same thing. I guess it is better than no reporting from English media.

What I could gather from the news:

Ad watchers had appealed to consumer court claiming fraud by HUL.
HUL agreed that some language in the ad could be misleading and decided to pull the ad out and change the packaging.
The basic claim is that the batches that contained gold coins were out much before (manufactured before 22 Nov/10 Dec 2009) and currently running ad-campaign says that offer is valid for soaps manufactued between 5 Oct 2009 and 20 Jan 2010.
Appeal has been made for 2.5 Crore penalty for misleading.

Loksatta also quotes that it is illegal to advertize based on schemes involving luck (like lottery).

So many interesting things here -

Win for consumer awareness
How can HUL dare to violate a law, that too in marketing itself?
Why is there so little reporting on news sites or blogs (The reason I am putting it up here)?
Why does it take day and half more for other news sites to investigate a decently important story? Are there vested interests (unlikely that so many are together)? Or is it delay in indexing from google (again, unlikely)?

is China immoral in censorship?

2010-01-15T00:29:00.003+05:30

For ethical and/or commercial reasons, Google is threatening to say Goodbye to China. Google was complying with Chinese censorship till date, now it is in civil disobedience. Google is complaining that cyber-attacks over its systems originated from China (likely from intelligence network, given the sophistication) hence it is no longer in good conscience to support self-censoring of search results. Meanwhile analysts are wondering whether the low market penetration in Chinese search market was significantly worth to Google anyway. China is basically suspected to have acted in bad faith.

It is sad that a large population can be cut off from useful information just because their government feels insecure. But I have a different point to make. It is high time others stop patronizing China (or India, or Africa....). China is trying to set rules for the games it plays rather than playing on someone else's turf.

Many in Western free speech lobby are taking a moral stand over Chinese censorship. I think it is ok for China to allow or disallow rights to citizens. For example I have no business asking my neighbour to behave to her family members. Likewise, westerners have no right to tell China how to treat its citizens.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to justify the attacks and I am a strong believer in democracy. But people outside have no moral high ground in imposing a belief system on China.

It is ok to call censorship suboptimal, but not ok to judge it moral or immoral.

PS: Interesting graphic.

Another poetic response

2009-12-25T01:42:00.003+05:30

Before also others' poems have inspired me to write. This one written few months back, may be out of context especially for those who were not part of discussions at wee hours. If you happen to read, try and read in the sequence. All three are strongly interlinked.

One - The original (seed)
Two - The response
Three - The re-response:

नया चाँद हर महिने आता रहेगा
हँसता गाता रहेगा, मुस्कुराता रहेगा
चाँद से ज्यादा चंचल तो हम ही हैं,
जानते हैं कि हर नया चाँद गुमनाम होता रहेगा |

फिर भी हम आस लगाए बैठते हैं कि वह हर रात सजाएगा
चुरा के ही सही, इतनी रौशनी भला वह भी कहाँ से लाएगा?
फिर अमावस पे वह नही आता, टूटते हमारे दिल
तब याद आते हैं तारे, आज फिर दिखते झिलमिल |

चाँद या तारे, दोनों के बिना अधूरी ही लगती है रात
अंतर बस यह कि हम ही हैं देखते चाँद को अरमानों के साथ
तारों के साथ हम अरमानों के कोई बंधन नहीं रखते
इसी लिए लगते हैं वो अपने, हो पाती है उनसे दिल की बात |

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

सब तारों में एक, कोने में अकेला बैठा रहता है
लोग पाते उसको अचल, उत्तर दिशा दिखाता है
पर लोग क्या जाने, हाय! कैसी चक्कर आती है...
एक दो ही नहीं, पूरी दुनिया जो मंडराती है |

पूनम पे तो मुरझाता है, जलता है चाँद से थोडा सा
और अमावस पे तुम्हे गुमसुम देख, होता है मायूस सा
लेकिन उस ध्रुव ने भी ठानी है ध्रुव तारा बने रहने की
अमावस की रात जब चाँद न हो साथ, लोगों का साथ देने की |

उसके भी दिल की सुनने वाली होगी कोई परी
कफनी वाले जोगी का दिल हुआ है भारी
तड़प रहा है वो भी ऐसे ही किसी के साथ के लिए
किसी के नही, शायद उसी एक हाथ के लिए |

- कार्तिक
९ अप्रैल २००९

Hypnotists and us

2009-12-08T17:01:00.007+05:30

While at IIMB, I attended a panel discussion on Corporate Governance and Transparency. An interesting takeaway from this discussion (and from Fin.Acc. course) was that the good guys wanting stability have always played a game of catching up over rogue behaviour by bad guys.

As from following story, it turns out that curbing rogue behaviour can end up encouraging rogue behaviour in some other form. Story picked from MarginalRevolutions (pointing out how licensing is ineffective)

Back when I was working for the Indiana General Assembly, one member...became convinced that it was crucially important for the state to address, via statute, the problem of rogue hypnotists traveling the land, preying upon unsuspecting Hoosiers. He wasn’t anti-hypnotist, mind you–he thought the government needed to protect people from unqualified hypnotists...

So the state passed a hypnotist licensing law, complete with the requisite boards, professional standards, forms to fill out, fees to pay, and so on....Then, after the law was enacted, a funny thing started happening: The state began receiving license applications from people who didn’t live in Indiana....It turns out they were doing it so they could advertise in the yellow pages and on bus-stop billboards as “state-licensed.”

This got me thinking. For starter, I am a product of two of the certified brand names - IITKgp and IIMB. So it turns out that the certification from the brands is no indicator of whether I will be a good guy or a bad guy. Ok, leave me aside. I am a nice guy. But that is not the point.

We demand transparency to have accountability. We enforce transparency through rules and laws. We take transparency as (only) means to accountability since moral conscience is not as objective. Iam not saying that all hypnotists are corrupt. But the point I see in this story is transparency alone can only be partially effective at best, and corruptible at worst (refer to use of derivatives in financial crisis and current debate on whether carbon derivatives will be the cause of next bubble). Relatively best economy is where good guys are consistently catching up over bad guys. If there is something else which can drive responsible behaviour, please comment.

I have a parallel theory. Spiritual and religious philosophers had realized this problem (i.e. transparency not guaranteeing responsible behaviour) centuries ago. Hence they themselves acted opaquely to make it easier for others to follow. They painted good economic behaviour as moral behaviour. You may say that their reason for opacity is well-meant. Or maybe it was just laziness.

Future

2009-11-18T23:30:00.001+05:30

Scene 1: At the time humans did not have enough intelligence to be distinguished from other animals, there were two rules.

Eat and reproduce.
Repeat

Scene 2: 10000 years ago, we were hunter-gatherers. There was no written law, and only loosely understood rules. Something like -

Eat, reproduce and provide for your group.
Find something which can make your tasks simpler - like fire, tools made of wood or stone, wheel etc. Once one human has found it, the whole group has a better chance of survival.
Whoever is physically strong will survive better.

Scene 3: In feudal ages, majority of population was peasants and labourers. There were formal laws made by powerful like kings/thakurs/barons etc, which were followed by everyone. However, due to unequal distribution of power there were too many moral hazards to improve standards of life for everyone. So the rules of the game were like -

Provide for family.
Pay taxes according to your produce. The taxes will go for the welfare of everyone. So again, civilization as a whole will survive better.
Do not question authority. Whoever has stronger connections will survive better.

Scene 4: Today we are at a stage we think about freedom, equality and justice. We aim to provide democracy, rights of property, voting, free speech, Habeas corpus[1] etc. Now the rules are loosely -

Be responsible towards self, family and taxes. Taxes will go for providing of "public goods".
Make use of freedom of rights, but do not falsely shout fire in a crowded theater[2]. Also uphold the freedom for everyone else (including those who are marginalized, not necessarily through specific concessions). Give respect to get respect.
Whoever can contribute/innovate/raise standards of life can survive better (broadly speaking, whoever is more intelligent/wise can better provide for themselves/family/society/humanity).

Okay, maybe we have not reached this state fully yet. The previous rules are sticky, and have not gone out of the game.

Scene 5: In future, I think issues for the whole earth (like sustainability of environment) will be more important than ethnic and political differences. Hence we will need to democratize our powers over the earth's ecosystem further down to other animals and plants.

Giving voting rights to other creatures may sound outlandish and outright crazy. But only in 1948 did UN uphold voting rights to women[3]. Many suggested it was outright crazy. A large part of Arab world still denies the rights today. And I am not saying anything about rights denied to races and colonies in past.

You may argue that trees don't have enough capabilities to select wisely. But it was argued all the same about tribals, blacks and women. And see how it has been proven wrong.

The basic aim of life still remains survival - with all the other types of gender, preferences, races, and also with other species, not without. We need the diversity to hedge life on earth against possible future catastrophes like virus attacks. If we need to survive together, we need to treat everyone equal.

That is what the future is going to be - Orangutan rallies reaching UN headquarters in protest of declining tropical forests[4]. And do expect political lobbying from butterflies, salamanders, bats, vultures and lemurs with tacit support from plants and fungi, and blessings from endangered species or perhaps a directive from Gaia[5].

Related readings:

2009-11-12T17:32:00.000+05:30

Few days back my ex-boss passed away, suffering from a medical condition. Intelligent, professional and full of drive, at times he was perceived as eccentric. The news left with a weird and dumbfounding feeling.

The point isn't to attach labels of adjectives especially to a person no more. Rather the point is that many failed to see the innocent heart obscured by our perception of eccentricity.

We don't appreciate as often as we criticize.

May you R.I.P. Ulpa Thapar.

Truth, power and peace

2009-11-03T23:05:00.008+05:30

"Only power can protect peace", Says China Air Force Commander (refering to imminent unavoidable militarization of space) and "Only power can protect truth", says RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat (in news on TV, can't find link). Without endorsing the philosophical background of both, let me agree with "power can protect peace/truth" and disagree with the word "only".

Power is an easy solution to protect peace and truth, but a very dangerous one. All the history will show that centralization of power has always led to its abuse more than holding up peace/truth. While Bhagwat acknowledges that truth has a way of staying dormant and that it never dies, my contention is why do you need power in the first place.

An easy argument is that in order to preserve your identity, you would prefer that someone powerful doesn't arm-twist you for his personal interest. All the politics at national and international levels in its most genuine form keeps coming back to "I want to be powerful because I don't want other powerfuls to dictate my life."

The difficult part is to understand that the power is not over others, but over self - one, in preserving myself while being arm-twisted, and two, controlling myself and avoiding arm-twisting others. Even if I suffer or even die in the process, the truth does not, it never will. I end up living through the truth that lives beyond me and everyone else.

In the long term, majority people (and I am sure other animals and plants) want peace and truth. The natural path is of peace and truth. By the logic of evolution, life moves to a path of 'fit'ness to the environment around. The environment is the facts - the truth. Keeping it sustained is peace.

Any suppression of truth only builds a temporary imbalance. Unnaturally tackling the imbalance using power only creates another bigger one somewhere else, until it all collapses and ends up abusing the power. It is like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics (more on it sometime later).

Without contradicting oneself at different points of time, the only long term sustainable strategy of life is truth and power over oneself, thereby implying peace and benevolence (not necesssarily altruism).

musical programming

2009-10-31T14:26:00.003+05:30

I am kicking myself. Why didn't I try nyquist or chucK or something else before? The huge list is on wikipedia for the starter!!

HAVE.. TO.. CODE.. MUSIC..
/zombie-mode

Crude humour

2009-09-04T00:40:00.003+05:30

Obama: Who are you?
Hu: Yes.
Obama: English please, and it will be great if you can open your eyes.
Hu: I speak English. China speaks Engrish. Hummer is Chinese now. China makes everything now, including milk in melamine and toys in lead. We will also break India apart and ruin their exports. We will rule the world.
Obama: We can't let you take jobs out of America. Yes, We can, with a 't.
Hu: We are not taking Jobs. (Punches Steve in the eye) He has an iJob.
Steve Jobs: Hu stays hungry. Hu stays foolish.

Posting after quite a while. Will write more later. Currently reading Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, J Krishnamurti and other interesting stuff about economics, evolution, science, technology and steel.

PS: No harm intended. I know India is not the perfect place on the earth and I don't hate the dragons but everybody is making too much noise about their esteemed return. And too loudly. Shh! They are listening.

Renewable energy and Music

2009-02-04T05:17:00.003+05:30

Both the topics interest me but the blend seemed inconceivable.
Till I heard, rather saw Solar Punch perform during IYCN Conference on Climate Change held at IIMB about a month back.

Awesome concept.

They use solar panels to power their sound. To be able to play in low light, they use batteries which are charged during the daylight. They add a touch of glitter with those chain of lamps, and of course with their music. And with their lyrics which are mostly related to sun.

And they work at their jobs full time. They are touring along with IYCN to promote renewable energy, taking sabbaticals from their jobs.

Awesome concept.

Defining love

2009-02-02T17:51:00.004+05:30

The age old question: What is love?

Caring for someone
Not expecting something in exchange
Willingness to give anything up (except your core values/beliefs/system)
Forgiveness/Absence of hatred or indifference

I think the last one is generic and yet elegant. Hatred comes from feeling of merciless revenge. Ability or willingness to forgive someone (sometimes after a punishment/revenge) is absence of unforgiving hatred, is love.

In the vaguest of terms, I have no idea how convincing this argument is. I just scribbled out the train of thought. Don't think too much about it, you need not react to this thought immediately. Take your time.

cowards strike again

2008-11-27T02:17:00.006+05:30

Yes, you heard it right
cowardice it's not a fight
brings anger than fright.

Yet another test
of the society's patience
someday it will end

You want your voice heard
you shout but you don't listen
we are far too many

Your noises will drown
you shout or we do, anyway
the world is worse-off

The more you do it
the more it unites us all.
Worst ever deadlock
------------------------------

Cowards. You did it again. If you have any guts, dare to touch me, online or offline, day or night, Mumbai or Bangalore. I'm no powerful, yet you won't dare. Because you have no courage.

You hide behind the mask of your fundamentalistic issues. Don't you realize the next wave of issues you create? Your families are destroyed, so are those of peaceful comrades. One of my friends (who is peaceful, like most of the Muslims) was ~~about to be~~actually denied his visa to US (to visit Stanford univ.), just because you express your outrage in hostile manners.

Some good things will come out of this, although there were less bloody ways.

First, it will tend to reduce corruption. Police will unite against death of colleagues. System will be pressurised to stop Havala route of money.

Second, since CEOs of companies got stuck in the hotels attacked, companies will be forced to rethink their social responsibility. They can no longer shrug it to the government that the world should be a better place for everyone.

Third and not so cheerful, life of peaceful Muslims will get worse, but in the long run they will turn against you. You are not helping your community at all, forget about bringing Caliphate rule (Like all recent blasts, HuJI are being suspected behind this. Update: Deccan Mujahideen have taken responsibility via email, but media suspect LeT.)

Last, it will force me to think - "Can I do anything?" And there so many like me, that somebody will have an answer soon.

Questions to my friends: Can we do something? What should we do?

WTF

2008-11-23T23:33:00.003+05:30

What do you do on a lazy drizzly sunday evening with awesome weather -

watch cricket match
study for end term exam on next day
listen to a torturous discussion on topics hardly relevant to you

I happened to choose the third option today. Since the match was shortened to 22 overs and studying for exam is also no fun, there was a little consolation anyway.

From another standpoint, I took pity on life that offers only sucky choices.

How many things have you come across at a stretch which have left you with the feeling "WTF?"

Your mentor prof asks to meet on a day before exam
You are the first one to arrive, and prof comes when you are on your way back
There are two groups apart from yours, yours will be discussed last, and apparently you need to sit in other discussions
One group discusses their project for one hour, you sit quiet
Prof says it will be over in another half an hour and actually means one and half
Second group discusses for another hour, you are again forced to attend because apparently it is relevant to your project. In reality either

you already know it, or
you don't know it but it is totally irrelevant to you, your life, your project, and your exam on next day and you couldn't care less, or
you stopped listening while thinking "even this shall pass away" until you get bored of that thought or any other line of any poem too, or
you are lost in the thought of pending assignments and prof himself answers a question he has asked

Your turn comes, prof asks more questions than you do, does not answer any and draws a diagram no one can understand later
You want to ask a genuine doubt, but unlike everyone else in the institute, the prof who is the chairperson of computer centre, does not have office 2007 installed on his pc
Update: Prof scans your pendrive in suspicion of a virus, but his own system is infected and it creates 68 trojan files in otherwise clean folders

I can go on. The point is, whatever I did ended in "WTF". You might have gone through something worse. But hey, you didn't blog about it.

On a positive note, it has probably made me more tolerant (or ignorant) of bullshitting.

Realise you're living in the golden years

2008-11-17T18:14:00.005+05:30

To IIMB friends:

From the coast of gold across the seven seas
I'm travellin' on far and wide
But now it seems I'm just a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do
It isn't me but someone else

I close my eyes and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain't it funny how it is
You never miss it till it's gone away
And my heart is lying there
And will be till my dying day

So, understand
Don't waste your time always searching for those wasted years
Face up, make your stand
And realise you're living in the golden years

Too much time on my hands I got you on my mind
Cant ease this pain so easily
When you can't find the words to say
It's hard to make it through another day
And it just makes me wanna cry
And throw my hands up to the sky

So, understand
Don't waste your time always searching for those wasted years
Face up, make your stand
And realise you're living in the golden years

- from 'Wasted Years' by Iron Maiden

PS: A cousin asked me on orkut "dada what is that you do that you are paid 9 lakh per year", and I laughed out loud alone.

God

2008-11-07T05:30:00.007+05:30

What is common between prisoner's dilemma, global financial markets, and law? All of them give good results if (and only if) everyone believes and complies with the rules of the system.

If I forsake other prisoner's trust, I gain in a single game. But in repeated games, my best strategy is to comply voluntarily and punish immediately (more specifically, copy other player's previous move, at times with small probability of forgiving defection). With a rational opponent, the sum of individual benefits in non-compliance is less than that in compliance strategy. A beautiful illustration of this can be found at S Anand's four philosophies arising out of pure mathematical logic. Communication, or any method of co-operation between prisoners helps.

In an investment bank I can earn fat bonuses for a few years using complex financial wizardry. But when it comes in an opaque and unaccountable manner (and same is done by other bankers as well), everyone loses trust in me, my company and overall market. The sum of individual paychecks and bonuses is less than overall loss faced by the market. In the long run, I would earn more if I (and others) believed in not cheating the system by not being transparent and circumventing the laws. Government's measures of restoring co-operation and faith help.

If I believe in god (of any kind), I am less likely to resort to atrocities, having faith in my own future. If I start creating a destructive distrust between different religious beliefs, I create a fundamentalist in someone's mind. Respecting the religious systems - mine and others' helps in cooperation and peace.

I have come to believe that the hope essentially stems from the faith in the system. I am inclined towards being agnostic when it comes to religion. But given the above analogies, I think it is better for me that I believe in a system. If more people believe in a system (not specifically religious system), mutual cooperation can produce more benefit for the society on the whole. I am more or less willing to believe in god, if it helps coperation in the system, and I think it does as shown by researchers. This article in The Economist shows through economic games that belief in group/system helps. (Read the last para for humour.)

One may compare the belief in a system to an economic cartel of producers, in both the systems there is a short-term incentive to defect from given association, but not in long term. However, there is one important difference. In a cartel, the extra value created for producer is coming at the cost of customer, making it a zero sum game effectively. In a game of prisoner's dilemma cooperation creates value but not at someone else's cost.

Few days back one of my friends was trying to proxy in class. If I don't believe in the system of x% compulsory attendance in a class, I am likely to give/arrange for proxies. I hope the above argument is convincing enough for him not to proxy in class :-)

PS: Yesterday we had a fantastic talk by Shaheen Mistry from Teach For India. I am inclined towards volunteering, but not yet sure of it. Let's see.

social entrepreneurship

2008-10-24T08:27:00.005+05:30

One of the courses this term is on the verge of changing all my priorities in life.

It is interesting that title of another course 'Self Transformation - Indian Approaches' is more appropriate to the result of Social Entrepreneurship course. STIA is about philosophy and spirituality in different religions and transformation of self. While STIA is also food for thought, SE has actually transformed me, or at least influenced my thoughts quite a bit.

Till now it was only a budding thought that I should take up something socially relevant - so I was trying to volunteer for different NGOs and help them in documentation or other MBA-like work. Though a management school leaves little time to volunteer in actual field work, this term did give some opportunities to do that through course work as well as voluntarily.

The thought was probably rooted right at my school Jnana Prabodhini, working itself for rural employment generation, education for children of sugarcane workers & tribal children and other such initiatives. Increasingly, I am coming to believe that I should work full-time in the development sector (poverty alleviation, NGOs, improvement of livelihoods, etc). I am not yet sure if I will take it up right after graduting from IIMB. If not immediately, I do want to, in near future.

PS: Even after putting it in to-do list, blogging has taken a back-seat. As part of that to-do, next I promise to write on some people I look up to - some social entrepreneurs, some mavericks, a couple of musicians. The common thing that connects them is probably their passion.

What to do

2008-08-28T03:25:00.006+05:30

Earlier I had contemplated whether I will steal someone else's chappals, if I could not find mine outside a temple. My obvious answer was - no, I will not. I may have to go home barefoot, but I will stop the potential chain of unhappiness then and there. The fact I did not consider while answering was the price of new chappals. Then something happened after I wrote that post.

About 3 months back, my and my friend's laptops got stolen from our hostel room, during our summer internship in Hyderabad. It happened because of ignorance of many people, including us. The police were reluctant to accept the FIR, but we did lodge a complaint against the theft (without any bribe).

Meanwhile, as laptop is a must for academic (and entertainment) requirements in IIMB, I purchased a relatively cheaper one with a decent config, and returned to Bangalore. I occasionally missed the data I had not backed up (the bugger stole my USB hard drive as well, where I had most of the backup. Though I saved few CDs which turned out handy). Otherwise the incident was put in the backseat. Rather it was written off.

Lessons learned:
1) Ensure that your room is locked in an unfamiliar place, at whatever cost.
2) Back up your data on multiple media - CDs, online storage.
3) Do not keep all the eggs in same basket.

Now the twist: earlier this month, I got a totally unexpected call - from the police station, saying that our laptops have been recovered from the concerned person. They asked us to travel to Hyderabad and collect the laptops, no questions asked! We were ecstatic and astonished about their efficiency.

What was the last time you recovered a theft, via police? We were jumping with joy and celebrating. I almost gave a mini-treat to friends.

But wait, what if the trip to Hyderabad turned out meaningless? After all, taking a weekday off from life at a B-school was not that easy, not including the expenditure on travel. What if they demanded money to return the laptops? What if the process took too much time? What if the laptops were not ours?

We called the concerned officer. We enquired about all that. Later we also asked friends in Hyderabad to meet them. The police seemed to be worried about the court-case that was imminent from the FIR. They give us the laptops, we cancel the FIR, problem solved. So bribe was probably not required. About the processing time, they said that we will require at least another trip later, but they promised to solve the things quickly - remember, they had the responsibility on them and they didn't want the matter to reach courts.

And then we realized, that was the precise problem - they didn't want the trouble in their books. We asked them to describe the laptops. From the description, it was clear that one laptop could be ours, one surely was not.

Now here is the dilemma we faced. Should we take the laptops which are not ours? We have the following two options:

Option1: Take. Use in whatever way possible - sell, give to friend/family, donate. Police are also relieved. Live with the choice - possibly few sleepless nights about whom the laptops actually belong to.

Option2: Refuse. No hassle about going to Hyderabad, no time spent chasing papers and no visits required further. Possibly we were the lumberjacks in the folklore. Or possibly the laptops will be scrapped, nobody would claim them, and there was no chain of unhappiness.

We have made our choice mostly. Before revealing that I would like to see what you would have done in this situation. While making your choice, remember the temple connection, the old folklore of the lumberjack and his axe, and the opportunity cost of not taking the laptops.

Your thoughts?

//todo

2008-08-26T05:08:00.003+05:30

I have been making todo lists in many formats so you'd have guessed that they work only partially. I have used google calendar, outlook calendar, add-on on thunderbird, post-its on vista sidebar, post-its on paperboard in the room and whiteboard till now. So this is the latest mode of making a todo list and sticking to it - blog. Below are few things I wish to do during next 3-4 months, and YOU are going to remind me :D

TODO in next 3 months (or losely speaking, keep doing it for some time):

Find a guitar/drums tutor to come to IIMB to teach interested junta.
Listen to more types of music, particularly explore more in rock.
Continue mp3-tagging by collection of songs.
Start composing, write it down. Explore song structures.
Try sculptoring soap.
Read the books lying in the room (esp. End of Poverty, remaining volumes of H2G2 series)
Blog more frequently. Start a series on social entrepreneurs.
Translate books into Marathi for GTS.
Continue working with Weflap.

Now you know why I end up not completing the do part in these lists, they are so long!

No but seriously, many of the above don't even need reminders - I will do them as I find time. At times I will squeeze time to do it. You just need to remind me that I will keep on finding such times. Tell me, call, chat or mail me in a while, and just say that you read this post. I will do the rest.

tired

2008-07-31T23:44:00.004+05:30

Frankly I'm tired of the glorified rat race.
Not because we rats join it, but because the race breeds more rats, or so it is designed.
However, I should clarify that rats are the most supreme intellectual beings in the universe, as the conventional wisdom⁽¹⁾ goes.

Frankly, I've stopped looking forward to count Gandhiji's face.
Not because it's the means not ends, but because there's much more to get yourself aligned.
However, you may say that you need to buy that alignment too. I disagree. After me, my alignment goes.

Somehow, I've put my dreams on the backseat
With the faith that the spark⁽²⁾ will live for long
I am taking up more responsibilities, few which are a burden.

Somehow, there are no drums and no beat
With the assurance that my life will be song
I am falling in the trap, and not exploring the garden.

I am pushing time, another month passes
Buried deeply in work, study and classes
Not bothering to take a look outside
Snubbing others' existence⁽³⁾ in my own pride.

I will be another one among oh-so-glorious faces
Looking at the world from my rose-tinged glasses
This poem should become more structured, I decide
I lack the taste, but there's no restaurant I've not tried.

Notes -
1: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
2: Chetan Bhagat's speech: Keep the Spark
3: The Disadvantages of Elite Education, by William Deresiewicz

Quota for professors

2008-06-28T16:32:00.003+05:30

According to the latest whim from HRD, IITs now need to reserve professorship for categories. Someone who is shaping the future of the country can't be trusted anymore.

I hope some director resigns, standing against this tyrrany. I will feel ashamed to be an alumnus of an institute calling itself elite and not practicing meritocracy.

This is not ending here.

Would you - III

2008-05-09T15:34:00.004+05:30

(Previously: Would you part I and part II)

After the introspection, I find myself inconsistent and irrational. For instance,

I would like to donate part of my fortune (II.5). However I am strongly against giving alms to any beggar (I.5).
Someone would not give way even when the vehicle behind honks (I.3), but he would connive with colleagues while not accepting bribe himself (II.3).
Someone would donate a part of lottery earnings (II.5.1), but she would not accept that extra earnings are also windfall (II.5.4).
Someone may hope to elect unpopular candidate (II.9), but may not choose solar energy (II.10) or may not switch foods (II.8). Yet each one of that set is a vote against a convenient choice.
I would not require another Rs 100 note (II.4), a beggar will be much better off with it, but I may not pick it up to pass it to him. If I am well off than average person on road, should I let others pick the note lying on road, or should I pick it up and donate it (II.5)?
I may want to donate a part of my fortune for social cause. How do I make sure it reaches its intended recipients (II.7)? How do I justify deliberate redistribution of wealth (I.5,6,7,8 II.1,4,5,6,7) in case it reaches wrong recipients?

Won't free markets work better than any deliberate redistribution of wealth? Why should I push my opinion strongly if I believe in free markets, and if I accept that the other person is free to believe otherwise (and both can be correct)?

I don't know. I wish I had answers that didn't prompt more questions. I would like to know whether you have thought on these lines, and if you too are short of answers.

Reasons for this apparent inconsistency, I feel are a combination of the following

The questions described above are not standalone example of single phenomenon. Saving someone, saving a beautiful person, paying from your pocket and not hurting your arch-rival are a package in single question. It will be very difficult to frame such impartial questions and to answer them honestly.
There is inherent limit we set to our deeds. For example - would you kill someone for Rs 100? Rs 1 lac? Rs 100 cr? for survival?
We prioritize among money, sex, relations, ideas, recognition, self-actualization etc differently. Not only we see others' priorities as irrational, we ourselves are guided by different priorities at different situations.

All this effort is not to point inconsistencies in our thinking (there might even not be any and I am no one to do so). It is to make one think about self and his/her choices, to make him/her introspect.

Would you - II

2008-05-07T19:18:00.003+05:30

Previously: Would you part I)

Would you demand a bribe being a babu?

from a poor person who cant pay it?
from a rich person who can afford, but is known to be a philanthropist?
from a rich person who can afford, and is known to possess lot of black money?

Would you accept bribe even if you don't want to, but because peers pressurize you?
Would you connive with other corrupt people instead, but not accept bribe yourself?

Would you pick up Rs 100 note lying on road

when no one is watching?
when someone is watching you, but you can act as if it fell from your pocket?
when no one is watching but you know that someone is looking for money lost?

Would you donate a part of your fortune

if you picked up the above note?
if you won a gold coin in packet of chips as part of marketing scheme?
if you are earning more than you deserve (in your opinion)?
if you are earning more than you require?

Would you live a simple life, reduce your consumption so that you can donate more?
Would you stop donating if you find that your money is being pocketed by uninteded beneficiaries?

Would you switch from non-veg to veg because more people can be fed from veg (or from some food to some less tasty food)?
Would you vote against a popular (set to win) candidate known to be corrupt, just because your vote may matter?
Would you switch to solar power even if it costs more than saving in electricity bill, but saves CO2 emissions?

Next: Part III

Would you - I

2008-05-06T18:12:00.004+05:30

This is a series of 3 posts. Basically series of questions, of which I myself don't have consistent and fixed answers. In the end what I have is only more questions.

Answer the following questions. All the questions are of the form "Would you ....... (do something)". Be honest to yourself. There are no right or wrong answers. This is not a test, so there are no results, only more questions.

would you skip a signal

if the signal just turned red and the next vehicle goes ahead?
if the signal just turned red and the next vehicle stops?
if the signal just turned red and the next vehicle stops at 3 am?

Would you wait for the red signal timer (at ten) to be zero if person behind you honks continuously?

Would you give way to that person?

Would you pick someone else's shoes outside temple if you can't find yours

Would you rush an injured beautiful person, lying on road, to hospital?

if s/he is poor and you may need to spend from pocket?
if s/he is the person you hate the most?

Would you give a rupee to a beggar who doesnt want to work?

if he is handicapped?
if he is fully healthy?

Would you stop giving a rupee to healthy beggars because they may start to earn by working?

Would you resist paying to eunuch even facing harassment?
Would you resist paying ransom to an extortionist?

Would you you want to be a terrorist ending up killing someone who believes otherwise?
Would you criticize other religions because their beliefs contradict yours?
Would you you want to be a gangster knowing that you will kill someone just like you?
Would you you want to be a soldier knowing that you will kill someone just like you?

Next: Part II and III.

Half Way Through

2008-03-29T15:31:00.007+05:30

Living every day in the fast pace
All dull work without a grace
Each one struggles to find own place
Where's his face? There's no trace.

Noises, fights, quarrels, affrays
3.3 for consult, because it pays
"Ain't no rat", his conscience says,
"I want brighter days, in my own ways."

Half way through the rough waters
Falling in love with Knopfler & Waters
"GPA?" ask Kotlers and Kotters
Careless he mutters, "It hardly matters!"

Pursue his dream, all does he care
Melody and beat, guitar and snare
'Cause, the truth when it's laid out bare,
Is not money or chair, but finding your flair.

- In response/echo with a couple of thoughtful posts in last few days - by Nikky and Kandarp
we are half Yum Bee Ye already....

the organization kid

2008-02-16T11:49:00.005+05:30

From the organization kids being bred at Princeton -

[...]But nowhere did I find any real unhappiness with this state of affairs; nowhere did I find anybody who seriously considered living any other way. These super-accomplished kids aren't working so hard because they are compelled to. They are facing, it still appears, the sweetest job market in the nation's history. Investment banks flood the campus looking for hires. Princeton also offers a multitude of post-graduation service jobs in places like China and Africa. Everyone I spoke to felt confident that he or she could get a good job after graduation. Nor do these students seem driven by some Puritan work ethic deep in their cultural memory. It's not the stick that drives them on, it's the carrot. Opportunity lures them. And at a place like Princeton, in a rich information-age country like America, promises of enjoyable work abound—at least for people as smart and ambitious as these. "I want to be this busy," one young woman insisted, after she had described a daily schedule that would count as slave-driving if it were imposed on anyone.

[snip]

In short, at the top of the meritocratic ladder we have in America a generation of students who are extraordinarily bright, morally earnest, and incredibly industrious. They like to study and socialize in groups. They create and join organizations with great enthusiasm. They are responsible, safety-conscious, and mature. They feel no compelling need to rebel—not even a hint of one. They not only defer to authority; they admire it. "Alienation" is a word one almost never hears from them. They regard the universe as beneficent, orderly, and meaningful. At the schools and colleges where the next leadership class is being bred, one finds not angry revolutionaries, despondent slackers, or dark cynics but the Organization Kid.

[big snip]

Maybe the lives of the meritocrats are so crammed because the stakes are so small. All this ambition and aspiration is looking for new tests to ace, new clubs to be president of, new services to perform, but finding that none of these challenges is the ultimate challenge, and none of the rewards is the ultimate reward.

I am afraid students at IIMB (and at other elite institutes) more or less belong to the same class - self-imposed workaholism, no motivation to question authority (rational ignorance) and no motivation to get hands dirty (high opportunity costs). I am not sure where I belong, but it does sound disturbing. Something needs to change.

(Link from India Uncut)

so many things so less time

2008-01-31T03:40:00.000+05:30

I wonder why I end up with so many things to do simultaneously. Right now all the following activities are going on (not in specific order)
1.All fin electives
2.Music practices for Unmaad - eastern & western
3.Accompaniments for solo/duet events in Unmaad
4.Leadcap walk
5.NGO initiative
6.Seniors' placements

And if possible, I have to attend Shailu's wedding a day before an end-term exam.

They say good managers are good at multitasking. Probably I was a type 2 error in that regard.

Soham

2007-12-06T02:04:00.000+05:30

This thought occurred to me a few days back.

Before that, let me give you some background on my beliefs so that it would be easier for you to reach the conclusion I reached.
1) I am an agnostic - It is very difficult for me to have blind faith in existence or non-existence of something.
2) I wonder about consistencies in different religions and philosophies - about the ultimate truth or about realizing that you carry a part of the God-ness in the universe (Paramatma or the equivalent).
3) I believe that taking an initiative (leadership so to say) is an individual decision after your own realization (the defining moment). Leadership cannot be taught or inherited (Leadcap)

Putting all this together, I think one carries a part of the ultimate power (God/Paramatma etc) BECAUSE one can decide to make a change to the world, and see it happen. To me, that is the most profound realization over some time.

In short - "Soham" - is the realization. I am him. I am the one who can change the world for good. And so is everybody else, if they wish.

birthday wish

2007-11-09T23:57:00.000+05:30

I hope dada gets to choose what he wants by doing well in his remaining UPSC exams a week later.

A reason to start over new

2007-10-29T17:41:00.000+05:30

Few wonderful things have happened amidst of summers.

1.Spicmacay concert - We got violinist duo Ganesh & Kumaresh to perform in IIMB on 26th. It was a short but beautiful concert.

2.Music room got set up - We had a budget of 3L! We have got Tama drumkit, Ibanez bass, Kramer (electric) and GB&A (acoustic) guitars, Yamaha keyboard, 3 Stranger amps and a Marshal amp. Plus the music room is acoustically padded on all sides. Yey IIMB! Can't wait for summers to get over (that explains the title)

3.Saw a few TED videos online - all were interesting. From relating probability of heads & tails to length of pieces of DNA strands to making rural cooking smoke free, all give valuable insights.

4.Had read about Aravind Eye Care Services before, but now was the time to write about it. Do read and if you have time, do watch abridged or full documentary - very inspiring indeed.

awww

2007-10-16T23:57:00.000+05:30

Which one looks cuter?

this -

or this?

It took two years before those 20 minutes in hair saloon, to try being this -

sigh.

second term

2007-10-02T01:23:00.000+05:30

(credit - Naka , modified to suit local context)

So what does term 2 bring? A colourful marketing text book? A 'god level' finance text book? A heavier load of case studies?

What does term 2 promise? A 3-month marathon of what kind? A summer internship selection process, one too many PPTs, reams of application forms, vault guides, case-books, surprise quizzes, Vista, sleepless L²s, and an indirect rat-race till death with 259 others for a place in the sun- these all and some more.

Rats! I have to begin somewhere to fit myself to companies.

So what does life after IIM bring? Professional nostalgia for the alma mater? 'God level' finances in your bank account?

What does life after IIM promise? Decades long marathon of what kind? A job with huge load of binding responsibilities & expectations, one too many formal PPTs, losing sleep over deadlines and another indirect rat-race with thousands of others for proving the worth of the brands - these and more.

Rats! I have to begin somewhere, to seek the purpose of this life.

Though I keep rationalizing by saying "This too shall pass away", whatever comes next, will also pass away. So will life, universe and everything.....

Sigh....

That is 42.

on rakshabandhan

2007-08-28T07:28:00.000+05:30

लड़की - मैं तुम्हे राखी बाँधना चाहती हूँ.
लड़का - वाह ! तुम कोई धागा लाई हो और मैं बाँध लूँ, कल मैं मंगल सूत्र लाउ तो पहेन लोगी क्या?

(courtesy - a mail forward, incidentally by a girl)

IIMB transparent on admission criteria

2007-07-28T03:07:00.000+05:30

IIMB has decided to make the criteria for admissions to Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) transparent to everyone. The details can be found on the website (pdf). The following structure was for admissions to PGP 2007-09, but it is expected that similar framework was in place before, and it will probably continue to be with some tweaks in the following years.

Some surprises (or spoilers you may say) -

CAT score carried only 20% weight, the cutoffs are much lower than those thought of (85% sectional, 90% aggregate for general category)
Previous academic record carried 40% weight.
GD summary carried as much weight as the GD itself (7.5% each).
Work-ex had an optimum value of 36 months (contrary to the more the better)

Now it will not be a surprise that IIMB gives single calls, or may not give calls to people who get most others. It may also explain why an IIMB-batch is perceived as diverse. It is also heartening to know that one of the most complex and subjective procedures is objectivized in a way similar to what I used once.

While others have blogged about this already (1,2), for me the conclusion is - my being in IIMB was not dependent only on 19th Nov 2006. There was a lot of 'karma' associated.

(More on experiences in IIMB some other day, have to study for a test with 10% overall weight, happening in about 5 hours.)

new keyboard layout

2007-05-02T07:13:00.000+05:30

While reading an article on slashdot, this idea struck me. Now I have a business plan, surely this product is going to be a huge success among the users who will be watching movies on windows :D

A good option to have

2007-04-29T04:38:00.000+05:30

Everytime some good news comes, there is one bad. Last year, some of my friends could make their way to IIMs, but i could not, this time it was the other way round.

With smaller system boundaries, the good news is that I got admits from IIMB and IIMC, and bad news is that I am unable to decide between the two. All the advice I have sought from friends in this regard has just added to my confusion.

Here is an exercise to put an end to it. The relative weights given are subject to my perception (and all you friends because you are the cause of bias), and may not represent the reality. The favourabilities are approximated on a scale of 100, 100 being the most favourable case. For example, I am expecting some rigour in both IIMB and IIMC, so peace factor has a less favourability value in both (yeah, blame relative grading!!).

Factor	Weight	IIMB	IIMC	B score	C score
reputation	6	99	95	594	570
maths	2	70	80	140	160
peace	4	15	25	60	100
climate	1	85	40	85	40
campus, mess	1	80	65	80	65
distance from pune	1.5	70	40	105	60
ease in moving	0.75	90	40	67.5	30
friends in/near city	0.5	80	50	40	25
proximity to city	0.5	65	45	32.5	22.5
traffic in city	0.5	0	0	0	0
diversity of students *	0.5	86	83	43	41.5
rock culture in pubs	0.5	50	85	25	42.5
rock shows	0.1	95	60	9.5	6
interview **	0.25	90	50	22.5	12.5
TOTAL				1304	1175

*Based upon statistics quoted by one of friends
** Based upon my own view that my PI was interesting

For one of my senior's advice ("You will like it here in C") I would add bonus 100 to IIMC's score.

We still have the winner - B by quite a small margin ~2.5% (and what else would one expect!).

Disclaimer: The outcome of this exercise does not assure that it will be same as the actual choice. I reserve all rights to discard this outcome and flip a coin instead.

(Congrats to all who made it - Sahan, Aravind, Lather, Churu, Majhi, Nishant, KC and others. Hard luck for who could not convert the calls they wanted, there is something else waiting for you this time.)

ततः किम्

2007-02-10T21:44:00.001+05:30

Here is post on this blog after a long time, since most of my time is being spent in my job, music-practices and (maybe wasted in) preparing for IIM interviews. So the habit of blogging on every weekend has now taken a backseat, and doesn't seem like driving for some time to come.

Here are the reasons one should appear for IIM interviews -

Irreproducible percentile
IIMs calling (and a promise of bright future therefore made)

Reasons it might not make any difference

Same old story of "घर से ऑफ़िस, ऑफ़िस से घर, बॉस का डर, बीवी का डर"
It does not answer the question "ततः किम्"*
The world might not exist in a livable form after only a few years due to either/combination of

US foreign policy and a feared chain reaction
Chinese space policy and another chain reaction
Standstills on Hosur Road in Bangalore and continuous addition of running vehicles
Increasing global warming and increase in natural violent activities thereof
Decreasing biodiversity - on land, in air and in water
Aliens getting frustrated of increasing stupidity on earth

And here are the reasons I would think twice before going to an IIM

Need to get a haircut. And keep doing that till hair stops growing.
Need to revise dept fundae, HR questions, general awareness and what not
Need to learn to be a hypocrite, especially in the interviews
Need to move on - Hate trying to find amicable people every now and then, especially regarding one's musical activities.
Not earn financially for following two years and still face hardships.
Face a stiffer and faster job-life after that.
Foresee an early retirement out of exhaution, frustration and long suppression of one's non-professional penchants.
If you win a rat-race, you win, but you are still a rat.

Given a choice, I would go to IIMs if haircut was not a concern, but now I am confused.
So right now I am in a moral dilemma, similar to the person around whom a typical GD revolves - "What should s/he do now?"

* "ततः किम्" means "what after that?"

p.s. there has been an update on this post to add reasons for indifference, so don't get confused if you read the post differently now.

Why I stopped watching TV

2006-12-17T00:05:00.000+05:30

Some reality-shows are so real and some are not. I used to like "The Apprentice" until it all became clear that Mr Trump was actually after hiring a really well-educated scholar rather than smart and good looking executives with experience. It was just a conspiracy to make me watch the season right till the end. All was becoming apparent, if not blatant, that the show was all predecided ('fixed' - if you like cricket too much).

Then I started watching MTV Roadies. They say a gem will shine eventually. So true about this show. If something is a gem of stupidity and gullibility, it has to have high TRP ratings. Gone are the days when all the saans-bahu serials on k-channels used to rule, welcome to the new age of soap operas. (You might ask why i didn't switch channel - simply because there was nothing saner and more elegant than this.)

So here goes today's episode: some excerpts -

The bad man took audience by surprise in the previous episode - but you've got to agree, the one whom the worst person opts to vote out, must really be worse and should be thrown out instead. (This is so nonsensical, they could have gone one step further also - choice of that person could have been thrown out of the show and so on until it loops forever)

I observed something funny though, the screen behind the bad man is very different than the scene behind the participants - of course, that is because they are facing each other. Also, all the participants are looking at different places when the he speaks. My guess is that they are all bewildered by the facts just been told by him. [I-blink-innocently]

Some task is given to these participants throughout which, they keep making fools out of themselves, keep thinking how 'cool' they are, keep voicing why they would be a better roadie than others and keep changing their plans to vote someone out. It's amusing when a person assumes s/he can be cool, if s/he can throw some english words which have to blanked out ("dont *beep* *beep* talk like that....")

Then I come to know that two persons will be voted out in this episode.
A quick look on bad man - he chuckles.
A quick look on the participants - lightening has struck them.
A quick look on myself - I'm so thrilled !

Now there is a dramatic 3-way tie between three participants A, B and C, after (anti-)voting.
The anchor pops out a stunner - "What's in your minds right now?" (Like they want to go off-screen, and blog their thoughts at that instant.)
participant X - "mai kisi ko trust nahi kar sakta ab, do do minutes me change ho jate hain log." [sic] (As if he didn't know that before joining the show)
Suddenly the producer remembers his financial commitments and says "dekhiye break ke baad.... kya C fir vote out se bach jayegi?" My curiosity almost kills me.

Two of them(A and B) finally get voted out.
Anchor - "aisa kyo hua" (Why does he have to ask such questions all the time?)
participant A - "sab ne ditch maar diya" (That was a matter-of-fact answer. And just two minutes before, all were in her favour - those two minutes of break made all the difference...)
Anchor - "Do you want to say something?" [sic] (Was he expecting "Yeah, I feel like elaborating on how I feel right now"?)
participant B - "All the best, do well" [sic] (This is sportsmanship, after all that bickering for becoming a bi(c)ker....)
B sobs-all-over-with-background-song (and I was about to cry for her)
C still blabbers about how A and B were worthless [sic]. Same song is being played in higher tempo and higher volume.
And then finally the voted-outs bitch about others conspiring against them and how they were victimized [sic].

I am looking forward to next episodes of roadies, and then next season right from the auditions. Then there is also [V]-fresher-vjs. It's simply amazing that so many stupid people are ready to be 'bakra's. Otherwise I have stopped watching TV because the shows are becoming more and more inane and melodramatic.

I wish I had not bought my brand new TVS Apache, you know.... it just killed my chance of being a roadie. If I had not got a bike, I would not have to go through the pain to push it half a kilometer just because a salesman in the showroom didn't tell me that it did not have enough petrol to run for 5 more km.

p.s. call me a geek, but the instant this happened and the instant roadies episode finished, urge of blogging hit me.

Update -
Stupidity never stops to popup and amaze me. There are dedicated forums to discuss MTV Roadies. People have gone forward and identified some participants on Orkut here.

कुठेस तू

2006-12-10T22:46:00.002+05:30

तू आता कशी असशील, थोडा घाबरलोय
तू अजून तशीच असशील? थोडा बावरलोय...
आज तू पुन्हा मला जवळ करशील? कारण,
इतक्या दिवसात मी पण थोडा बदललोय...

हल्ली रोज रात्री झोप सुद्धा थकून म्हणते -
प्रेमात "पडलेला" तुला असे कधीच पाहिले नव्हते.

गळ्यातली गाणी, खिशातली नाणी
पण डोळ्यातले पाणी आणि मन सुन्न;
वाटले मी चंचल असेन, अजून कोणी पुसेल,
मन पुन्हा फसेल, पण जगच किती भिन्न !

माझी कथा माझी व्यथा कशी मी आज सांगू तुला
न कळे कधी माझ्यातला एक हिस्सा हरवला.

तोपर्यंत माझीच समजूत कशी घालत राहू ?
कधी पर्यंत बोलणे असेच टाळत राहू ?

नकार जरी असला तरी तो आज मला कळू दे
अजून थोडी समजूतदार झालीस तू आज.... आज तरी तुला भेटू दे.

- कार्तिक
१० डिसेंबर २००६

misc/diary

2006-12-02T16:38:00.000+05:30

after some persuation from a friend, i tried pandora. it is too nice to have music played according to your taste, but with an uncertainity as there is in a radio.

this is first time i will go to a live concert (Sonu Nigam) after coming to bangalore, just some time later to publishing this post.

after some delay, i met this alumnus of iitkgp. i had met him before, but did not have time and peace to talk at length. liked his views about everything. definitely look forward to play bass along with his synth - should be fun.

some time back, i talked about moving on and how i would stop looking forward to some ambitions(!) in life. not right now, but definitely sooner than i would have expected, this time will come - one of the major reasons i don't particularly look forward to do MBA, at least not right now.

looking back, this november seems to have far too many posts than before. (not that i am slowing down.)

Everything has a time scheduled for. or so it seems. :)

p.s.
René Descartes - "I think, therefore I am." (translated from Latin (or French))
Aristotle's ghost to Descartes' - "If I was not, I would not have thought." (translated from Greek)
don't tell me this sounds latin and greek to you ;)

about my job

2006-11-29T11:19:00.000+05:30

(translated from actual chat in marathi)
chinmay: tera kya chal raha hai?
kartik: khas kuchh nahi.....
monday ko maine ~1500 lines code likha,
kal usme se ~500 lines delete kar di aur ~300 new lines likhi
chinmay:maine bhi ek 1500 lines ki SQL query likhi..
aur ab usko debug kar raha hoon
kartik:hehe.... THIS is software !!!

Though I love the bheja fry being done during this coding.

smoking kills

2006-11-25T14:53:00.000+05:30

It has been proved again and again that smoking kills. I wondered whether smokers consider their addiction above their (and others') lives. Then I realized that most of the urban people smoke at least two times a day - once leaving home and once returning. This form of smoking is found to be more injurious passively than actively.

Two immediate solutions thought are electric vehicles and hydrogen. Elecric vehicles on 2, 3 and 4 wheels are already available (in indian market itself). Albeit, I rarely see these on road premierly due to shortcomings such as low acceleration, high charging time and limited life of batteries. Hyddrogen as fuel (directly or as fuel cell) is yet to come up with viable economic designs.

The real question unanswered here is does it stop pollution? Unfortunately right now, most of our electricity production relies on non-renewable fossil fuels. Even if we turn to nuclear fuels to solve our energy crisis, safety and disposal of wastes become a major issue. Any more dam construction will only invite more propaganda and politics. Other renewable sources such as solar energy, tidal energy and wind energy are yet to make it big.
So that leaves us back to energy sources which cause pollution of some sort.

When electric vehicles were introduced in US, they didn't succeed. See about documentary "who killed the electric car?". Apparently there are more political interests in sustaining fossil fuel business than to think about well being of the globe (What else should I have expected from politicians). Here is a trailer.

I started with "smoking kills". Now the subject also touches energy crisis, politics and imperialism. Is all in despair?

We will have to wait for another technology revolution to answer that.

update:
call me a hypocrite, but I have decided to buy a (petrol-based) bike to survive the long distances in Bangalore. And if you see a blank space instead of a video, wait till youtube finishes trying out new formulae.... Somebody has a good sense of humour describing youtube's architecture in layman's terms

personality test

2006-11-21T00:36:00.000+05:30

Inspired from a blogger, I took a personality test. As it turned out to be, I don't like revealing myself, which is true but contradicts this blog, mainly because of my curiosity to take this test.

Here are the reults.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	40%
Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	53%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	46%
Accommodation	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Interdependence	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Intellectual	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Mystical	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Artistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Religious	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Hedonism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Materialism	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Narcissism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Work ethic	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Self absorbed	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Conflict seeking	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Need to dominate	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%

Romantic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Anti-authority	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Wealth	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Dependency	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Change averse	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Cautiousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Individuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Sexuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Peter pan complex	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Physical security	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Physical Fitness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	77%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|	16%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Vanity	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Hypersensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Female cliche	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%

Interesting thing is that it finds my nature pretty much right here, but the trail snapshot contradicts this analysis on some traits (such as adventurousness). Physical fitness, where thin is supposed to be healthy (!!) was definitely not expected :

trait snapshot:
does not make friends easily, secretive, introverted, reclusive, observer, dislikes leadership, somewhat socially awkward, does not like to stand out, dislikes large parties, values solitude, solitary, avoidant, ambivalent about fitting in, not dominant, unassertive, suspicious, prudent, unadventurous, worrying, weird, intellectual, frequently second guesses self

otherwise the result is quite soothing - the way I want myself to be :)

You can take the test for yourself here.

did you know?

2006-11-18T21:18:00.000+05:30

While those forwards keep pouring our mailboxes, only few are remembered. This post specifically refers to one such forward - "useless facts". To respect the original author, i too have added comments to follow each fact (or group of them)

40 useless facts about animals (and my opinion about it)
1. A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.
2. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
3. Starfish don't have brains.
('I know some people like that' category of facts)

4. Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be heard over 2 miles away.
(this also fits the category, calls being on cellphone)

5. When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone.
(this also fits the category. When they find food, they fart.)

6. A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length. Young kangaroos are called joeys.
7. Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
("mommy, teach me how to jump...... mommy.... where are you mommy? Michael.....?")

8. A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.
(rats should infest deserts, they have a strategic advantage and core competence)

9. A zebra is white with black stripes.
(i thought it was a brand of bra, white with black stripes)

10. Pet parrots can eat virtually any common "people-food" except for chocolate and avocados. Both of these are highly toxic to the parrot and can be fatal.
(corner house must have tested their innovation (DBC) on parrots.)

11. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
12. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
(What a pain for squids... one such was seen digging its own grave after catching common cold)

13. An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
(between two electric eels - "oh! look at poor Electra, how shocked she is at her boyfriend's survival, he knew it was her.")

14. If you keep a Goldfish in the dark room, it will eventually turn white.
(out of fear)

15. Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.
(if native americans had gone to switzerland, may be a beaver would have been seen today having 25 teeth, each suited to a different purpose)

16. Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as house cats. It excites them because it contains a chemical that resembles an excretion of the dominant female's urine.
(perverts!!)

17. Cheetahs make a chirping sound that is much like a bird's chirp or a dog's yelp. The sound is so an intense, it can be heard a mile away.
(bird - "chirrp" cheetah - "CHIRRRRP"
the bird flies off, the cheetah builds a rocket, flies out of atmosphere and chokes to death.)

18. Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.
(such a mantis was seen praying - " Oh Lord, give us today our daily hummingbird")

19. In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
20. The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous snakes combined.
(a swarm to a honey-eating man - "you ruined our lives. asshole, take this.")

21. Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.
(there was news of underground metro-railway being made in Mumbai and Bangalore, too late for Delhi.)

22. Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be sunburned.
(see pic for proof, she really got tanned on the beach - after all a hippo is a water-horse....)

23. A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
(that was what previous post on this blog was about - Ig nobel awards and why woodpeckers don't get headache)

24. Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that they can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.
25. The fastest-moving land snail, the common garden snail, has a speed of 0.0313 mph.
(may be these two facts are corelated, it must be difficult to keep on shitting just to walk millimeters. but the fastest one must really have been exhausted.)
26. A snail can sleep for 3 years.
(Must have been the fastest one.)

27. The bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admissible in an American court.
("were you present when the culprit committed the crime?"
"woof woof"
"so is he guilty?"
"woof woof"
"in that case he will be convicted for a hanging. do you have anything else to say?"
"woof woof"
"so you were paid a million bones to testify against him?"
"woof woof"
"and daily free lunch at KFC?")

28. No two spider webs are the same.
(does that include spiderman? was www made by him?)
29. The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
(we lose such a diversity of webs, just out of ignorance!)

30. The largest animal ever seen alive was a 113.5 foot, 170-ton female blue whale.
(so who says it is a male dominated society?)
31. All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives.
(see?)
32. Amazon ants (red ants found in the western U.S.) steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight. They depend completely on their slaves for survival.
(see?)
33. Only female mosquitoes bite.
(naturally, after seeing those ants...)

34. Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
(new reasearch proves that dolphins like metallica more than other music)

35. In 1845, US President Andrew Jackson's pet parrot was removed from his funeral for swearing.
("die you jackass". his opponents called him jackass, and he liked it for some time, and eventually his party took the symbol of donkey.)
36. More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
(this was the election campaign of the republicans this time - that's why they lost)

37. The tsetse fly kills another 66,000 people annually.
(Santa - "If I kill this particular fly, will I be awarded Nobel prize for peace?"
Banta - "If not, you will surely get the Ig nobel prize")

38. The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats and dogs" and led to the current expression.
(have you heard the song "it's raining men?", maybe she sang that during a flood.)

39. The world record frog jump is 33 feet 5.5 inches over the course of 3 consecutive leaps, achieved in May 1977 by a South African sharp-nosed frog called Santjie.
("and the gold medal in triple jump goes to...... can you see him on the podium?")

and this is the punch -
40. The Kiwi can't fly. It lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind, and lays only one egg each year. Despite this, it has survived for more than 70 million years.
(a polititian often flies, lives in big house on top of a hill, is fully blind to society, and lays multiple eggs each year. Despite this, it has survived for all the time democracy has been established)

nobel or ignoble? (world is full of humour and stupidity too)

2006-11-08T21:55:00.000+05:30

reasearch combined with humour, joblessness and queerness, gives birth to ig nobel prizes (yes, that is not misspelt, it is ig nobel, not ignobel, nor ignoble). Just like there are spoof academy awards - Golden Raspberry awards, or Pigasus awards given for extraordinary claims in para-psychology, there is an award spoofing the reverred nobel prizes. this is something which first makes you smile and then makes you think - the extraordinarily innovative research.

Scroll through the list and don't miss out on noticing how jobless these scholars are.
Here is a glimpse of what to expect - the list of research topics of this year's winners.

Ornithology(birds) - for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
Nutrition - for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters (gourmets!).
Peace - for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant — a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers. (checkout the teen buzz)
Acoustics - for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
Mathematics - for calculating how many photographs a person must take to almost ensure that no one in a group photograph will have their eyes closed: "Blink-Free Photos, Guaranteed." (this turned out to be elementary prob-stats, even i could have published this paper)
Literature - for report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly." (seems like the author was inspired for this prize beforehand)
Medicine - for medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and for another subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage." (what a coincidence... both ways)
Physics - for insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces: "Fragmentation of Rods by Cascading Cracks: Why Spaghetti Does Not Break in Half."
Chemistry - for study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature." (and did you know that an elephant cannot jump? i really wanted to know about such pieces of information)
Biology - for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet. (and i thought only i do something like writing blogs to get rid of joblessness)

and yes, before i forget, i should mention the cleverest lot amongst us, who eventually exited from the gene pool, winning themselves the darwin awards (so called because darwin talked about 'natural selection' as a consequence of 'survival of fittest'). this really made my day, combining the utmost stupidity and consequent humour.

The previous post talked about some intelligent people on a blue planet. This stuff is no less exquisite.

p.s. random wikipedia led me into this/previous post, but i've since improved from linking wikipedia directly to linking homepages of these stuff by scrolling down on those wikipedia pages - oh that lazy joblessness.

world is full of clever people

2006-11-07T21:33:00.000+05:30

a world full of shrewdness - precisely defines internet and its growth. it has always been about money, traffic, ads, and hacking other's stuff to promote yours (exception may be like google, which was first about product then business model build around it. (btw, did you know that gmail does not support dot, kartik.rdburman@gmail.com is same as kartikrdburman@gmail.com or any other combination with more number of dots, but i can login only using kartik.rdburman as my id. (and did you notice how gtalk is now improved to support offliners? (and did you notice how orkut is now integrated with gtalk? (these days one part of my job has been a part-time google testing team member as they keep adding features, and another part being required to match parentheses))))).

well, most parts of the blog are my poor understanding to already known phenomena on the web, but i just could not skip the revelation - more about human nature than about these tricks.

while the viruses and trojans have been ubiquitous, techniques known as pharming (farming trojans by hacking onto a server) and phishing (fishing an unsuspecting user into a seemingly innocuous but specious webpage, and asking him to reveal personal information) have been being used for some time now. remember any page on geocities/members.tripod which asked for your respective domain id/password? remember mails in your mailbox seemingly sent by your friends (and also not reported as spam by the mail service) containing such traps? before you blast your friend, think about why your password still remained same (if it did) and coincidentally your friend got such spam.

based on the flaws of the hastily built software systems, the so called hackers have always exploited the web for their own welfare (fun, money, challenge). some have gone forward to such an extent that they target a particular service (similar to spear phishing). AOHell was targetted at AOL, with a goal to have "20,000+ idiots using AOHell to knock people offline, steal passwords and credit card information, and to basically annoy the hell out of everyone". see its features here and here, it included simple tricks like ghost , scroll, finger (feeding chat screen with multiple lines/ascii art, like seen on dc++ chat), some kewl tricks (like fake account creator, IM Bot), some nasty tricks (like mail-bomb), and some really specious (like credit card number simulator)...... mind you all this intelligent programming was done only to take revenge on AOL administrators who used to shut hacker chatrooms down, but not chatrooms like childporn/pedophiles.

does that sound something like a sunny deol movie, setting the world around him right in his own manner - "kanoon haath me lena"? let me remind you that this is www=wild wild web. and no one cares what goes inside out of another server as long as it does not bother your system.

i can't find any reason to blame them (hackers) if ordinary mortals find the trick too intelligent to evade. similar but relatively well-known practices have been being followed in "traditional" business, and many still keep falling prey to them. you don't blame these business savvies because they dupe people to make money. this is precisely like a nice soft voice on your phone telling you that you need to pay a small amount of money by creditcard in order to get double balance deposited in your bank account, or somewhat like politely saying "give me 5 bucks and i will (if i wish to) give you back ten thousand" forgetting that the wish is inherently biased and your expected return should be zero. to someone more stupid, i would rather say "f*@# you !"

clever has a shade of intelligent, and a shade of cunning. it's like a movie - the protagonist can be a criminal, or can be a gentleman, it only depends on what character YOU find a connection with.

2006-11-04T23:03:00.000+05:30

a bass guitar with a cover bag - Rs 6500
an amplifier to make it rock - Rs 5700
playing your favourite songs on bass after so long - Rs 11500 (yeah, I got some discount)

playing music with your beloved friends - priceless

there are somethings in life money cannot buy.
for everything else there is monthly paycheck.

so am I not happy with my new bass? Definitely I am, just a bit nostalgia has eclipsed that happiness.

my own digging the internet for miscelleny

2006-11-01T20:17:00.000+05:30

if you are familiar with digg, you might find this blog pretty much plain.

it all started with wikipedia's today's article one day.

molecules with funny names - includes bastardane, miazole & urazole, arsole, DAMN, dUMP, ASS, SEX, erectone, megaphone, cummingtonite, moronic acid, fukalite, fucol, (broken) windowpane, the painful Antipain, penguinone, performic acid, diabolic acid, magic acid, lunatoic acid, erotic acid, small-breasted-dog.......
so much for someone who thought chemistry profs are not profane.

speaking of organic chemistry, there are some really "beautiful" molecules, such as cubane, tetrahedrane and dodecahedrane (platonic hydrocarbons), adamantane and other diamondoids, fullerenes, Mona Lisa of reaction chemistry

so much for chemistry, now mathematical beauty in the underlying geometry
platonic solids - the best part is when you see that a cube is a dual of octahedron and dodecahedron is a dual of icosahedron (and vise versa, of course)
archimedian solids - and their duals (catalan solids)
johnson solids (if you are too keen)
a nice java applet on this
(whatever, nothing beats fractals and conway's game of life in beauty in maths)

enough geeky matter, how about some humour, something new, if you were not happy with funny names of molecules?
apart from uncyclepedia and somethingawful, there are so many sources of hilarious articles on the internet such as
the discovery of a new element,
some stupid news on google,
hide and seek in spaceshuttle,
dinosaurs were no more impressive than ‘a collection of bored amoeba’

then there is something cute - cats

ok, enough arbit stuff now..... that proves i am mostly workless..... and reading h2g2 :)

update:
that also reminds me of a recent purchase of a book on Murphy's laws. You might have seen some of the corrollories of the ever-correct axiom of a developer's life as my recent status messages. This book is highly recommended to any smiling reader.

here are some of the classic quotes in the book -
"If anything can go wrong it will (at the worst possible time)"
and "If something cannot go wrong, it will."
"Murphy was an optimist."
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious."
"You may know where the market is going, but you can't possibly know where it is going after that."
"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing."
"If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number."
"Any attempt to print Murphy's laws will jam the printer."
"The day you wash your car, it will rain"
and "Washing your car to make it rain does not work."

update on current status

2006-08-26T15:45:00.001+05:30

anjai's blog pretty much sums it up on how banglore and the job have changed our daily schedule.

few additions -

1.Common expression -
"Oh no! It's Monday, and another week ahead..."
"It's Friday mann..... aaj meeting na ho, monday tak peace marenge."
"(In a sleepy state) Kya peace hai life..." - on saturday and sunday
"abe weekend khatam bhi ho gaya !!" - on sunday night.
2.I'm craving for somebody to have a jamming session with, if not a regular music practice.
3.Though it is a very confortable feeling that your bank balance rises every month (albeit, Banglore is one expensive city!), I wonder if I would keep doing this till they say I'm too old to work.

of music and engineering

2006-05-28T23:34:00.000+05:30

Quite some time ago, I was interested in the later more than the former. Needless to say, the situation is exactly opposite now.
Speaking about the incident, I found a broken harmonium kept on the loft. When I opened it in a hope of some melody, I found the bellows full of dust and occasionally stuck to their original place. Before estimating the extent or repairs needed, it was very apparent that it would cost as high as a new harmonium itself, so I decided that I should practice some of my "acquired engineering skills" and try to repair it myself. So a laborious but interesting job of glueing them back and fixing the joints with plastic, tape and paper, was done. In the end the instrument looked renovated but had a clear patchy appearence.
Though the reeds played the right notes after all the labour, the bellows were so weak that the sound of blowing the bellows was more than the sound of the reeds. Nevertheless, I could play the usual chords and sargam for a while, till my left arm told me that it was time to quit.

Some time back, I fancied instrument making as a profession. This day I realized the joy of keeping it as a hobby. I don't want this occasional fun to be a monotonous daily routine, which was very clear from the job I did. I would rather have the fun less frequently than destroy it.

Well, it surely was fun for the first time.

Inebriated maudlin

2006-04-20T22:44:00.000+05:30

thats what I'm right now.

There were many reasons today to celebrate -
1.(actually this is too old now) got a good job
2.finished with term project in MCS & OHM
3.had another ETMS treat and sensible discussion
4.will be leaving kgp in a month or so (almost sure, but not exactly)

having the-maudlin-feeling because -
1.I'm drunk right now
2.will be missing you friends after a month or so
3.will miss etms especially
4."the-hollow-feeling" (referring to apro's blog on a strange time)

I'm learning to live.
(that's a song by DT too.... what a coincidence)

moving on

2006-04-05T21:45:00.000+05:30

i don't smoke. i don't drink as much. but i'm addicted to quizrooms on dc. after deciding to quit, twice i felt like playing again. but now i've quit. well, almost....

i used to be addicted to aoe. then i quit. then i am playing cs for some time now. i'll quit that too someday.

i used to be in love. then i quit thinking about it.

i write blog whenever i feel like expressing myself to my other self. someday i'll quit that.

i'm looking forward to a job which will give me money. after some time, i'll stop looking forward.

i want to live life happily. some day i'll go to himalaya and live an ascetic life.

i try to set things right, if i feel something should be changed so that the world could be a better place to live. someday i'll quit.

i'm an optimist to the core. sometimes i quit being an optimist.

stuck

2006-03-22T05:11:00.000+05:30

wikipedia says - The Chapman Stick in the early is a musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman 1970s. He set out to create an instrument designed for the tapping technique and the first production model of the Chapman Stick was shipped in 1974. Superficially, it looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar with 8, 10 or 12 strings mounted on it, but it is considerably longer than a guitar fretboard. Unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings, rather than plucking them. Instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking, both hands sound notes by striking the strings against the fingerboard just behind the appropriate frets for the desired notes. For this reason, it can sound many more notes at once than most other stringed instruments, making it more comparable to a keyboard instrument than to other stringed instruments. This arrangement lends itself to playing multiple lines at once and many Stick players have mastered performing bass, chords and melody lines simultaneously.

the beauty of the tuning - from stickiwicki - This one will stretch your brain a bit. Since the melody side is in fourths, and the bass side is in fifths but in reverse order and a fourth is an inverted fifth, the same chord and scale shapes work on the bass side as the melody side! They produce different voicings, since the octave pattern is different, but the same shapes and patterns will work on either side.
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

here's more to explore - (yes, google and wikipedia are very good sites)
.The sole manufacturers of the intrument (check the prices :(( )
.flash-listening on Jason Stunges' site
.some mp3z - some arbit, some with vocals.
.the video of Greg Howard playing distortion on stick is awesome.
.an interview of Emmett Chapman.

I wish I buy this instrument soon.

p.s. people who still want to fight, move on. i won't entertain crap now.

entertained....

2006-03-18T05:30:00.000+05:30

My last 2 years in Kgp have kept me busy in music almost throughout the year. Here is what I've gathered from the experience (speaking about entertainment/music only).

Three habits of winning people -

How to win in any event -
a) "Tap" potential fachchas.
b) Get a judge who would be pass-out of your hall.
c) Get the gymkhana ent-secy in your hall.

How to win a groups event -
a) Get a slot different than first 3.
b) Get your hall people to kowtow.
c) Be the black horse - you can come second most of the times.

How to win a vocals event -
a) Sing some fundoo pop number with hoohaa modulation in western vocals.
b) Claim that you have not had training.
c) Sing same songs for all the duration you are here.

How to win an intrumentals event -
a) Do some wizardry (e.g. biting your guitar or playing tabla (only right) by both hands time and again).
b) Again, play same pieces over the years (except this year).
c) "Ek guitar aur ek synth... sabhi hall yehi karenge... kya sexy lagega be.... judge ekdam impress ho jayega.... nahi to kuchh nahi aanewala apna is event me.... mai bata raha hoon na."

And the other side of the coin - three habits of losing people.

How to lose any event -
a) Try something beyond your caliber, no matter how it comes out.
b) Find some excuse for not performing, you can do anything you want during this time - chat, play guitar/synth in your room, sleep, go to chhedis etc etc.
c) Get disheartened very easily (kya rakha hai, sab moh-maya hai!).

How to lose in a groups event -
a) Be overconfident about your musical abilities, don't care about tightness, meager amount of practice would be enough.
b) Don't choose something which you can do better than other halls.
c) Get a first day first slot when the judge is good, or any slot when the judge is normal.

How to lose in a vocals event -
a) Realize that you don't stand a chance anyway, so try something out of the blue.
b) Re-organize the ongoing event because of some impertinent reason.
c) Choose accopanyists who are not-so-experienced.

How to lose in a instrumentals event -
a) Any excuse (e.g. going to Cal) for not participating will do - samajh rahe ho na!
b) Try playing different instruments and decide which one to play 1 hour before the event.
c) Play what YOU like rather than what THEY like.

I have seen the habits of losing people creeping in most of us losers (sure these were sore grapes for me, I will be the first one blogging the other view - how it feels to lose) though I'd rather advice not to indulge proactively in so-called good habits (unless you have exceptional tempo like Daku or Bhatu or few other people).

Why am I being so sarcastic? There's a proverb in Marathi meaning "A wise needs no explaination". I hope people are wise enough to digest this sarcasm (In my defence I argue that if they can't take it, they may not be that wise!).

p.s. I sincerely hope that the persons criticised/glorified in the above post read this entirely (esp. all the RP-ent team members) because this is what an ent-captain should have done and has failed to do - motivate his teammates.

Hyderabad Blues

2006-02-06T23:43:00.000+05:30

4 days outside kgp - and life was very much fun.

just 14 hours before boarding train to hyd, we were not sure whether we could perform in the fest. various impediments such as acad load on Vinod and practices on short notice had already made us apprehensive about the outcome of the event. then Yogesh made it clear that he could not come. the afternoon before we had to leave for hyd, Vinod also had no choice but to leave us looking for some other singer. at 7'clock in the evening we were pondering whether to cancel tickets or to really put up a show. finally we decided to get some on stage experience, may be at some cost. so we had Kaushik in the band.

as usual, the train got late, but we had just enough time to reach IIIT and get a feel of the fest felicity) before our performance. after the show, we had a chat with Rana, met Ojha (who was fascinated by the sound of fatal tragedy), gathered ample number of fans. though we stood third, we were better in many respects than other bands. agreed, we did not have own compositions, we did not practice as much, and we covered DT largely when the audience was for more heavy stuff (metal/death/black).

we learned many lessons in wildfire show, and some more here.
1. never use a processor in which you cant set a tone, however pro it may be
2. check sound of each instrument on each monitor (esp when you are covering DT)
3. select a songlist more approproate to the performance, rather than what you would really like to perform
4. have an original composition
5. have a balanced songlist - yet to include deep purple /led zep /van halen /metallica /pantera etc
6. have confidence in yourself and your fellow members.
7. have a smaller sound check, preferably, do not play a sound check song.

so even if our expenses were more than the prize money and we experienced "kataoing" at many points of time in various forms (ask Kaushik), the experience was precious, and the trip was worth the effort.

when 6 junkies have some time off, guess what they do - they pass time. after we realized it was sunday and rang de basanti was housefull long time back, we successfully wasted our time munching and jhandaoing. Apro left us for his conference in Chennai in the aftenoon. then we went to Kaushik's home and watched and listened to DT before we came to know that the train back to kgp had to start late by an hour at least. so we watched and listened DT for some more time :D (passing time is always easy)

apart from the lessons , the wonderful outcomes of this endeavor were few phrases - "No!", "Ooooowk", "Heeeeeeeee" + clap clap clap, "h ha h hm h ha", "hagg do... sab milke haggo... hagte kyo nahi". then there were endless pjs and vocalized instrumedley practices which needed no communication, only few tapping of foot were enough to set the band into yet another recital.

so, what's next? we'll see if we can get to play in such events as much has we can, we will come up with some (at least one) compositions, we will practice instrumedley more and we will cover some more bands..... (hmm too many issues at hand :D)

a hectic day

2006-02-02T03:00:00.000+05:30

0:00 - practicing with my band in music room, i discover that the bass cannot be plugged in. I open the bass and plug it the hardcore way.
2:00 - practice and bhat is over, i go back to room. i am ecstatic after i discover the missing nut from the bass assembly.
2:15 - i log on to dc, check out whether someone in playing jumble/trivia/gtw. play for some time. unable to decide whether to sleep or not. decide to work on btp till 7.30 class.
4:30 - that's it... i'm too sleepy, btp kata ;), get some sleep for some time.
7:00 - alarm wakes me up but the drowsiness takes me down again.
7:15 - decide to attend class at 7:30. wake up and brush. have breakfast. wake apro up, he is in no mood.
7:40 - reach class. try to concentrate for 2 hours.
9.40 - go to atm to withdraw cash. discover that i don't have sufficient balance. withdraw as much as i can. wake apro up again and take extra cash.
10:00 - reach reservation counter, reserve 3 tickets and cancel another (for praticipating in Hell's Bell in IIIT's fest felicity, happening in hyd 3rd-5th feb).
10:15 - wonder how that got over in 15 mins and have a cup of coffee.
10:30 - attend another class, listen to a seminar. get a bigger case-study (31 pages) for my presentation in next week.
11:30 - feeling the heat, have a cup of ice-tea.
11:45 - reach room. open dc. play gtw. spam in the quizrooms.
12:45 - wash clothes. have lunch. abuse indian cricket team.
13:10 - come back to room. remember that eastern vocals is happening today. hold a practice session in my room with intermittent gtw and winamp.
15:00 - remember that term project seminar has to be given at 3:30. get hold of a notebook and rush to department.
15:30 - fumble the opening of presentation, so hand over to other fellows in the group. then do bigger bakchodi in the notebook - animations and drawings.
17:30 - return to hall, have snacks. goto room, open dc. before starting gtw, kauwa calls and asks about instruments needed for vocals. suddenly remember that i have to accompany others in vocals.
18:00 - go to music room, pack up and go to raman. wait for our slot.
19:00 - makhao the vocals more or less, listen to abuses of people.
20:00 - go back to hall, have dinner. assure hallmates that position is almost impossible in this event.
20:30 - go to room. try to play aoe a couple of times. once my comp hangs once my opponent's comp hangs. decide to quit.
21:00 - open dc. play gtw for some time and then jumble for some time. call up bandmates for practice. decide to have practice at 12.
23:00 - decide to sleep for an hour. set the alarm on but forget to change timing (7.00 in the morning).
0:15 - mohit has to come and wake me up. get over the "halu" state.
0:25 - go to music room. arrange the bass again. feel happy. practice the songs.
2:15 - practice over, get back to room. open dc. play gtw.
3:15 - after being exiled from both the quizrooms decide to write a blog about the day.
3:30 - complete the diary, but feel that there is lot of matter for blog still uncovered.
3:40 - "I am here right now"

before joining IIT, i had heard about students sleeping 3-4 hours a day and working hard for the rest of the day and how-life-is-hectic-at-iits. it had to be three and a half years to make me realize that such days can exist in a real iitian's student life (i still missed the hardwork part - it had a different connotation altogether).

will write more after returning from hyd.

Everything happens for a reason

2006-01-25T02:47:00.000+05:30

Events in past couple of weeks have firmly reinstated my belief in the above rationale.

first, I could not score well in cat 2005 despite huge expectations of my friends and myself. Then I saw random people getting placed in good companies in the campus interviews. Sometimes I strongly believed that I (or some other fellow) was far better candidates for that job profile. Many times I almost denied the existence of God. I wondered why this was happening to me.

Then came the so much dreaded friday the 13th.... after tiring rounds of tests and interviews - there were total of 5 tests, 2 interviews and a group activity in that day (and another interview was to be conducted, but got postponed to next day) I was always unsure whether I would get through to next round. But I kept on qualifying and eventually got a job worth Rs 7.0L p.a. in British Telecom, Banglore which suited my aptitude very well. What more could I have asked for?

Just in one day all the frustration was gone... no worry that I could not get through in CAT, no dilemma whether to go for further studies or to persue a job - though this brought a careless attitude for quite a time. (hell yeah... why not?)

There should have been something serendipitious in Varadpande family's horroscope during those days. on 12'th my elder brother got through in CA finals - that too 210+190 (if you don't know how lucky is that - CA final has 2 groups I & II. Each group has 4 papers of 100 marks each. To pass the group one requires to score 40+ in each paper and 50% aggregate. If you appear for both groups together, you can offset your scores in both groups i.e. you need 50% aggregate in the 8 papers with 40+ in each.)

The next morning, on 13'th, I was just hoping that luck would strike me that day. My wingwate, Rahul Mundra adviced me to wear the "lucky" shirt and tie on that day (this tie has a 100% record - P&G, Schlums and then BT). And yes, throughout the day I had the gut-feeling - "I will make it today." I am not superstitious, but the coincidence literally rocked me.

Then came the tiring practices of ETMS and wildfire. For almost a week I slept for 3-4 hours daily (mostly in the day), missed almost all the classes. I also missed Shankar Mahadevan's show in SF while picking up bass line in erotomania. Last night practice of wildfire came out very well and we were almost sure of getting through to finals. We even chose our songlist such that better songs would be played in the finals. Then the disasters struck (very aptly described in Apro's blog). It was so disappointing, knowing that it will be difficult to play with the same team again. I just hope it would not be entirely impossible.

We did fair enough in ETMS production. The so anticipated win in Sargam had us consoled little bit. I will miss the society very much. Because of these 2 music teams, my stay in kgp got fast forward in the last 2 years.

After the wildfire finals, the disappointment rather turned into an experience - we rarely had a chance to perform on such a big stage and whenever we could have, something or other popped up in the way. (b t w Faith, Hobos and Skinny Ally were just awesome.)

In retrospcet, everything happened for a reason - I could not get a job till then, because such a better job was waiting. I did not qualify through CAT, maybe I will have another go after 2 years of this job-ex, and maybe that would be more appropriate. Wildfire prelims were disastrous - it taught us many valuable things like care to be taken to set the patches on guitar processor, need of efficient sound check, adjusting to the accoustics of a place and most importantly, accepting a defeat and aspiring for a new horizon.

Call it serendipity, call it superstition, call it faith, call it rationalisation or call it absurdity, the series of events definitely brought a more mature self out of me. For I have realized something abouth the greyness of life.... nothing is perfect nor is anything perfectly imperfect. Being rational whatver I do will always keep me satisfied, regardless of what the fate throws to me.

Espescially after Skinny ally's performance, I am very much attracted to Jazz. I hope I get along with Mohit, Apro, Mukul and Vinod again and form a band after we pass out from here. I wish...

A story

2006-01-12T04:15:00.000+05:30

This is the story of my friend Sumit. He was a shop-floor supervisor by profession. Despite his intelligence and skills, his lack of attitude to take initiative (the company management called it laziness) and introvert nature always elongated his promotions. Though he actually wanted to be a story-writer, he hardly tried to write one. And when tried to come up with a stroy... this is what happened.

Frequently, he had to visit the sister plant of his company. He preferred staying in hotel there than long trips from home everyday. On one such trip he finally resolved to write. Interestingly, there was another aspiring story-writer Amit in his first story. Owing to his laziness to think of anything different, Sumit tried to create the kind of atmophere around his hero exactly like what he was under. He wrapped the story in a shared jeep ride from bus stand to his Uncle's home in the village.

The ride went from places to places in the town. He met fellows, some he tried to remember, some he wished to forget. He tried various activities to keep from boredom - tried to spark a conversation with the girl sitting nearby, winked and grimaced at the child sitting in front of him, observed the old man dozing on the shoulder of his neighbor, sympathized with that neighbor, had an arguement with the driver for driving fast on the bumpy road.

Sometimes he felt the road was too long and it would take eternity to reach Nani's home. Sometimes he missed the scenes passing by, being occupied in his thoughts or in his activities. Finally he took out his diary and tried to scribble something. It wasn't long before he understood that even he could not make sense of those garbled writings. He cursed the road and the driver again.

When Sumit finished the story, his mind was ecstatic. He felt relieved after emptying his mind into words. After so long somebody had listened to his inner self and he had tried to communicate with somebody, by himself. He read the story again.... The story did not have any attractive event or a character in detail. But he knew that. It was so much peculiar - so much familiar - a kind of a deja vu.

But who will read such a platitudinous story - he thought. There was nothing special, nothing captivating, everything so languid. So how about a change... after all it was just a story.

Sumit fancied a ride - with everything perfect - everything. The road was smooth. The jeep was posh (!). The girl talked to Amit for at least few minutes. There was no driver-seat, actually he din't care to look for the driver. There was a cute child sitting in front of him, constantly looking towards him and smiling. Amit also tried to smile back. Sumit felt exalted after making Amit so happy.

Before the change, he had bred himself into his brainchild. Now he felt Amit's life was much happier than his own. He pondered over this discrepancy... his hero was not like himself anymore. He wanted to fill in the gap between the two. But how could he deprive Amit of the bliss? Wouldn't that be unfair to him?

The phone rang. Sumit was already in trance contemplating over the discrepancy. His wife had to call him again to break his thoughts. He could hardly concentrate on her regular questions. He reassured her that he was alright and it would not take long before he comes back home. Before hanging up, something flashed in his mind. He asked her about their son Rahul. After a long pause, she asked him to get some sleep and hung up abruptly. Her voice sounded plaintive.

Sumit frowned. Everything in their life had been so perfect - so smooth, there should not have been any reason for her to be sad.

Amit's trip occupied his mind again. He decided to elaborate a bit on the child in front of him. Such a cute little boy. Amit asked his name. the child blushed and ran towards his grandpa dozing off on neighbor's shoulder. Waking him up, the boy smiled at Amit. Amit asked his name again. The boy said, "Rahul" and hid his face in grandpa's coat.

Sumit felt very calm and serene.

I have decided not to write any story about my life. Sumit's story haunts me everytime I pick up my pen.

a day of music and a night of minesweeper

2006-01-08T04:43:00.000+05:30

My wingies have always complained about me being busy in music practices throughout the year. Today they had another chance. After waking up at 12.30, having lunch, practicing from 1-3 for the show at 5, I still managed to practice more music till late in the night. In total I spent 6-9 hours today on music, depending upon some jhandao-time being counted or not.

Nights have been very late for me, owing to my nocturnal nature. So, as usual even after coming back to my room post 1'o clock in the night, I found myself fresh enough to play wordgames on dc++. After a while, I lost tempo, and came back to something much familiar.... minesweeper.

If you have successfully wasted fair amount of time on this wonderful game, you might appreciate the serendipity of completing amateur level in 2 seconds. But there was more elation to come... after having completed intermediate in 25 some time back, today I only managed 30. And Expert - yes, again a new record - 111. I guess the day was productive enough to be written about in my first blog ;) .

Could you hear the bell? *ghanta*